Sena Customer Service
- Thread starter Andrew Shadow
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Andrew Shadow
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They won't fix it or they won't fix under warranty?
I haven't worked in a GM dealership for a long time but when I did GM had authorized radio repair facilities in every major area. The dealer removed the complete radio unit, sent it out for repair to one of these shops and reinstalled when it came back repaired. Ask them about it.
I haven't worked in a GM dealership for a long time but when I did GM had authorized radio repair facilities in every major area. The dealer removed the complete radio unit, sent it out for repair to one of these shops and reinstalled when it came back repaired. Ask them about it.
I look at it as expedient for them to give you a cheap smartphone at their price, rather than to maintain a cellular system just to support an old outdated system.
Paul,
Having just replaced 2 Sena SMH10 batteries, very simple and cheap with one caveat: I purchased the Amazon 2 pack and only one of the two replacements had reversed pins: check them, easy reversal with magnifying glass and sewing needle.
10 minutes start to finish for both.
Tom
Thanks Tom. See my PM to you
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If they sent you and the brother in law a free set then took the manager of Sena Customer Service out back and shot him for you would this thread come to a conclusion?
Agreed. Until it isn't. If the battery lasts three or more years I'll feel like I got my money's worth. But less than that feels pricey. The 20S is my first Sena so I'll have to see how it goes.TPadden said:
Obviously it's Sena's right not to offer any outside of warranty service but I do think they should for a pricey bit of kit. And will their community forums seem to offer a lot of help my brief contacts with Support proper were far from encouraging. I'm glad it didn't need repair.
Shawn K
Professional Cat Confuser
Then there would be an outcry over the draconian measures that Sena took.
It does. The analog clock in my previous car never worked from new. The car went in three times under warranty. All they every did was reset it.
It took several calls then several more to a regional rep then a thread to take it to a then TV consumer advocate. The clock finally got replaced.
The passenger side window began to clunk when lowered when the glass struck some metallic object. Took it in and it was fixed. Years later the car was out of warranty when I put speakers in the door. Pulling the panel off I saw the repair was made by wrapping electrical tape around the metal support bracket for the window. The original rubber bumper fell off but was sitting in the bottom of the door. They couldn't be bothered to glue it back on or replace it with a new one.
Yes GM Customer Service sucks even under warranty.
Shawn K
Professional Cat Confuser
All the more reason why a person might as well learn how to diagnose and fix things on their own. In most cases, the "professional" doing the "repair" is no smarter than you anyway.
Dad taught me that for decades. It's only really hit home with me in the last decade or so.
Dad taught me that for decades. It's only really hit home with me in the last decade or so.
Sena is a small company compared to say- Apple who has replaced out of warranty phones with with 'refrubished' phones that are equal to brand new. But they could afford a bullet. That is a little extreme though.
Fortunately Mellow has incorporated an option available no matter which side of the fence you're on.
Yes because very often a warranty isn't worth the paper or electrons it resides on. Even greatgrandad said 'they don't make 'em like they used to' and it seems to be truer with every generation. If it isn't planned obsoleteness it's disposable.Shawn K said:
I purchased my SMH10/ 2 pack $269 April 2014 ( $135 a unit) from Amazon. Both units were still working 5 years later; holding a charge for about 6 hours music and phone calls down from about 8-10 hours. So for $10 a battery I swapped them out.
Tom
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Andrew Shadow
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There was never any question of maintaining the old network and they made that clear well in advance of the date. It was not a matter of it being cheaper to give away phones verses maintaining the old network. It was being shut down period and everyone who did not upgrade their phones would simply no longer have service.
I don't even have a monthly plan with them. I only have a minimal ($5.00 / month) prepaid account so I in no way felt that they had any responsibility towards me whatsoever and expected to have to buy a new phone. In my opinion they did not have any obligation to do anything other than advise me that my phone was no longer going to work.
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Andrew Shadow
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Not sure where you came in at but I wrote very early on that we both accept that the warranty has expired. I never wrote that I expected a free replacement or even that it be fixed for free. It would be nice but I contacted them to inquire about a repair only to find out that there is none offered.
The reason for the contention that that their customer service is lacking is not because they won't replace a post warranty unit free-of-charge. It is because they do not sell batteries (if indeed the battery is the problem and we don't know that it is) or offer any means what-so-ever of having any repair effected be it under warranty or not, the fact that it took almost two weeks to get a response from them, the fact that getting a response from them required way to much effort, the fact that my other unrelated previous dealings with their customer support went much the same way in that they were less than helpful even though they did not involve any replacement or expense of any kind on their part, etc..
While your suggestion would solve the issue of this dead Sena unit it would not, unfortunately, change the fact that the poor service has already been rendered. It would also result in a dead Sena customer service manager which can't be a good thing. I suspect that this would lead to a degredation of their ability to provide customer support so I further suspect the issue would come around again.
Nashcat
Site Supporter
No one has talked about the logistics of why Sena might have made the decision to not have a repair facility. Hiring a good electrical bench technician will cost you upwards of $80 an hour, plus insurance and benefits, which will total over $200K a year. Sure, you can hire someone for less, if you want them to tinker with it for 3-4 hours and then give up. Then you figure the cost of shipping and insurance, maybe $12-15 per unit. Then pay another person to handle the calls and keep up with the paperwork.
Let’s see. Technician opens the box, sorts through the package to see if you left a note about symptoms. Checks and charges battery, updates firmware and pairs the unit to a device for testing. If he does nothing else, but packs it back up, he’s got an hour in it. There goes $100 ($80/hr + benefits). Then $15 for S&H, added to an estimated $15 to $20 for the person making phone calls and tracking the paperwork. Let’s not get into the cost of setting up the UPS shipping computer and equipment, unless you had rather have the technician stand in line at the UPS store. Oh, forgot about the floor space needed for the service department and added utilities.
I don’t see how you could realistically turn one around for under $150 in labor and expenses, which is probably more than the profit margin on the original unit. Or, they could set up a repair center and bill you the actual cost of the repair, plus a profit margin on repairs. Accountants don’t like you work on a break-even basis.
John
Let’s see. Technician opens the box, sorts through the package to see if you left a note about symptoms. Checks and charges battery, updates firmware and pairs the unit to a device for testing. If he does nothing else, but packs it back up, he’s got an hour in it. There goes $100 ($80/hr + benefits). Then $15 for S&H, added to an estimated $15 to $20 for the person making phone calls and tracking the paperwork. Let’s not get into the cost of setting up the UPS shipping computer and equipment, unless you had rather have the technician stand in line at the UPS store. Oh, forgot about the floor space needed for the service department and added utilities.
I don’t see how you could realistically turn one around for under $150 in labor and expenses, which is probably more than the profit margin on the original unit. Or, they could set up a repair center and bill you the actual cost of the repair, plus a profit margin on repairs. Accountants don’t like you work on a break-even basis.
John
You did note that the warranty is for two years when you bought it, right? Oh...that's right...the Sena you're complaining about isn't even yours. It's your brothers.
It's not like you have no options available for a battery. A package of two batteries cost less than $20 on Amazon. And you're upset because Sena doesn't find it profitable to sell batteries to you? If Sena did sell batteries, would you complain that they sell them for $40 and you can find them for less on Amazon?
Most situations have two sides. I wonder what the story would be if they were to respond here.
Your original post says that you were upset because they took over a week to respond. Okay. The second complaint was that they don't cover their products for warranty coverage...after the warranty expires. Huh? Why is that their fault? And your third complaint was that they don't offer a repair facility. Would your fourth complaint be that the repair was almost as much as a new unit?
Really??? You're now at the point that you'll "go postal"?
Check out eBay. They have BT communicators that work fine for as little as $36. I know a ride leader who has two of these and they work great.
Chris
WTH has that got to do with anything. This forum is rife with complaints about other people doing something that doesn't involve the complainer. Should they not say anything because it didn't happen to them? There'd be nothing but crickets and tumbleweeds. And oil and moly threads.Daboo said:
wjbertrand
Ventura Highway
I wonder if this guy can fix them? They fix a lot of other "non-repairable" stuff like Garmin GPSs etc.
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Andrew Shadow
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Allow me to get this out of the way first;
It would be appreciated if you would be so kind as to ensure that you have the correct target recipient for your criticisms. I did not make any suggestion of going postal. I merely responded to a sarcastically made, and I am absolutely certain not literally intended, reference to a shooting as a possible concluding solution that was made by someone else above. If this comment is not to your liking, I can only suggest that you to take it up with him as I did not make it.
Yes, and I did clearly write that very fact in the very first post.
I also eluded to the fact that this is not the normal service life expected of these units. Excluding the issue of battery life, most people have these units for many years and many thousands of miles without any problem. This one has only been used around a dozen times. In reality the entire first year it was not used at all. It has suffered neither abuse nor neglect. It seems evident to me that this particular unit does not measure up to the overall high reliability standards of Sena products. It should not have suffered such a catastrophic failure after such little usage. It is clear to me that this is a case of a defective unit. I do not think that it is indicative of their entire product line being unreliable. This one is simply a lemon.
I don’t expect or think that it is reasonable for anyone to expect Sena to routinely accept responsibility for units which are past warranty. However, in a case where there is an abnormal premature failure of a unit that is not within the norm, I do think that they should offer some kind of support to their customer who after all did purchase their product in good faith but yet still drew the short straw and received a dud unit.
Your assumption being that the problem is the battery in which case this unit can be cheaply repaired. That assumption is not at all assured.
Regardless of whether the battery is the problem or not, and keeping in mind that this thread was posted about what I believe to be poor customer service and not about the actual product, this logic escapes me. The delivery of poor customer service has already taken place. The availability of cheap replacement batteries elsewhere does not alter that. It has already happened.
To answer your question no. They are free to ask whatever price they wish. If their price is disproportionately inflated to the point that it took them to far out of what I consider to be an acceptable value, I am equally free to voice my displeasure with that pricing by spending my money elsewhere and not giving it to them. I suspect that most people including yourself would do the same with your money.
There isn’t really any room for different interpretations. One thing that Sena is very good at is logging the communications with their customer’s. As stated, this is part of why I suspect I had to file a claim even though a warranty replacement was not what I was requesting.
Every communication, both mine and theirs, is date and time stamped as well as logged word for word as written. It is all of this is a matter of factual record that both Sena and I have a copy of. As much as I am not pleased with the outcome there is precious little place in any of these exchanges where there is any room for interpretation. They were all straight forward questions and straight forward responses.
No, it was not. The second complaint was that they would not even look at the claim and rejected it out-of-hand based solely on the date of purchase. They initially did not even consider the reason why the claim was being submitted or allow me the opportunity to explain any possible extenuating circumstances that may be in play. It was simply immediately rejected.
In the event that the use of the word “claim” is a source of confusion leading to the belief that I was requesting warranty this is not the case. I have used this term because that is the Sena process I had to use as mandated by Sena. At the very beginning of this process the Sena representative informed me that I needed to submit a claim for them to look in to it. Presumably this is the process that they use to gather the required information and track communications with their customers, which is fine. I knew that the warranty had expired and I was not attempting to file a warranty claim. I only wanted to ask about getting the unit serviced or repaired but to do so I needed to file what they refer to as a "claim".
Or authorize others to repair these units on their behalf but I take your point nonetheless. Hard to answer that without knowing what the repair cost would be but it would certainly be nice to have the option available and it is not- which is what the complaint was actually about. The lack of any available options of any kind other than full out replacement of a very expensive unit with another very expensive unit, regardless of whether the defect is minor or not, is the issue.
Actually no, this thread has not been a complaint about the Sena unit at all. What this thread is about from the beginning is the customer service that has been received from Sena, not their product.
As a matter of fact, the opposite is true. I replied to another person earlier in this thread cautioning him not to use my opinion of Sena’s customer service as a deterrent to buying a Sena. I clearly stated that, while I believe this particular unit to be a lemon, I find Sena communicators in general to indeed be good products.
I am at a loss as to what point you are making here. You took the time to highlight this in boldface and underline it so it presumably is of importance to your viewpoint but I have missed it. If you care to expand maybe I can offer an insight in response.
I would also like to point out that I have already written in this thread that my opinion is not based solely on this one incident of this one dead Sena unit. It is based on this incident as well as two other previous instances where I contacted Sena support, on my own behalf, and received no helpful assistance at all. In fact, they actually gave me incorrect information regarding their software compatibility. So, this opinion is based on an accumulation of bad experiences with their customer service, not just this one instance that seems to have been focused on.
It would be appreciated if you would be so kind as to ensure that you have the correct target recipient for your criticisms. I did not make any suggestion of going postal. I merely responded to a sarcastically made, and I am absolutely certain not literally intended, reference to a shooting as a possible concluding solution that was made by someone else above. If this comment is not to your liking, I can only suggest that you to take it up with him as I did not make it.
Yes, and I did clearly write that very fact in the very first post.
I also eluded to the fact that this is not the normal service life expected of these units. Excluding the issue of battery life, most people have these units for many years and many thousands of miles without any problem. This one has only been used around a dozen times. In reality the entire first year it was not used at all. It has suffered neither abuse nor neglect. It seems evident to me that this particular unit does not measure up to the overall high reliability standards of Sena products. It should not have suffered such a catastrophic failure after such little usage. It is clear to me that this is a case of a defective unit. I do not think that it is indicative of their entire product line being unreliable. This one is simply a lemon.
I don’t expect or think that it is reasonable for anyone to expect Sena to routinely accept responsibility for units which are past warranty. However, in a case where there is an abnormal premature failure of a unit that is not within the norm, I do think that they should offer some kind of support to their customer who after all did purchase their product in good faith but yet still drew the short straw and received a dud unit.
Your assumption being that the problem is the battery in which case this unit can be cheaply repaired. That assumption is not at all assured.
Regardless of whether the battery is the problem or not, and keeping in mind that this thread was posted about what I believe to be poor customer service and not about the actual product, this logic escapes me. The delivery of poor customer service has already taken place. The availability of cheap replacement batteries elsewhere does not alter that. It has already happened.
To answer your question no. They are free to ask whatever price they wish. If their price is disproportionately inflated to the point that it took them to far out of what I consider to be an acceptable value, I am equally free to voice my displeasure with that pricing by spending my money elsewhere and not giving it to them. I suspect that most people including yourself would do the same with your money.
There isn’t really any room for different interpretations. One thing that Sena is very good at is logging the communications with their customer’s. As stated, this is part of why I suspect I had to file a claim even though a warranty replacement was not what I was requesting.
Every communication, both mine and theirs, is date and time stamped as well as logged word for word as written. It is all of this is a matter of factual record that both Sena and I have a copy of. As much as I am not pleased with the outcome there is precious little place in any of these exchanges where there is any room for interpretation. They were all straight forward questions and straight forward responses.
No, it was not. The second complaint was that they would not even look at the claim and rejected it out-of-hand based solely on the date of purchase. They initially did not even consider the reason why the claim was being submitted or allow me the opportunity to explain any possible extenuating circumstances that may be in play. It was simply immediately rejected.
In the event that the use of the word “claim” is a source of confusion leading to the belief that I was requesting warranty this is not the case. I have used this term because that is the Sena process I had to use as mandated by Sena. At the very beginning of this process the Sena representative informed me that I needed to submit a claim for them to look in to it. Presumably this is the process that they use to gather the required information and track communications with their customers, which is fine. I knew that the warranty had expired and I was not attempting to file a warranty claim. I only wanted to ask about getting the unit serviced or repaired but to do so I needed to file what they refer to as a "claim".
Or authorize others to repair these units on their behalf but I take your point nonetheless. Hard to answer that without knowing what the repair cost would be but it would certainly be nice to have the option available and it is not- which is what the complaint was actually about. The lack of any available options of any kind other than full out replacement of a very expensive unit with another very expensive unit, regardless of whether the defect is minor or not, is the issue.
Actually no, this thread has not been a complaint about the Sena unit at all. What this thread is about from the beginning is the customer service that has been received from Sena, not their product.
As a matter of fact, the opposite is true. I replied to another person earlier in this thread cautioning him not to use my opinion of Sena’s customer service as a deterrent to buying a Sena. I clearly stated that, while I believe this particular unit to be a lemon, I find Sena communicators in general to indeed be good products.
I am at a loss as to what point you are making here. You took the time to highlight this in boldface and underline it so it presumably is of importance to your viewpoint but I have missed it. If you care to expand maybe I can offer an insight in response.
I would also like to point out that I have already written in this thread that my opinion is not based solely on this one incident of this one dead Sena unit. It is based on this incident as well as two other previous instances where I contacted Sena support, on my own behalf, and received no helpful assistance at all. In fact, they actually gave me incorrect information regarding their software compatibility. So, this opinion is based on an accumulation of bad experiences with their customer service, not just this one instance that seems to have been focused on.